Search results for: flexibility enhancement

Authors: Andrej Kocjan

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Introduction: Mobility has been shown to play an important role of health and quality of life among older adults. Falls, which are often related to decreased mobility, as well as to neuromuscular deficits, represent the most common injury among older adults. Fall risk has been shown to increase with reduced lower extremity flexibility. The aim of the paper is to assess the importance of flexibility training on joint range of motion and functional performance among elderly population. Methods: We performed literature research on PubMed and evaluated articles published until 2000. The articles found in the search strategy were also added. The population of interest included older adults (≥ 65 years of age). Results: Flexibility training programs still represent an important part of several rehabilitation programs. Static stretching and proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation are the most frequently used techniques to improve the length of the muscle-tendon complex. Although the effectiveness of type of stretching seems to be related to age and gender, static stretching is a more appropriate technique to enhance shoulder, hip, and ankle range of motion in older adults. Stretching should be performed in multiple sets with holds of more than 60 seconds for a single muscle group. Conclusion: The literature suggests that flexibility training is an effective method to increase joint range of motion in older adults. In the light of increased functional outcome, activities such as strengthening, balance, and aerobic exercises should be incorporated into a training program for older people. Due to relatively little published literature, it is still not possible to prescribe detailed recommendations regarding flexibility training for older adults.

Keywords: elderly, exercise, flexibility, falls

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Authors: Harshan Baskar, Anirudh S. Chakravarthy, Prateek Garg, Divyam Goel, Abhijith S. Raj, Kshitij Kumar, Lakshya, Ravichandra Parvatham, V. Sushant, Bijay Kumar Rout

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In this paper, we introduce a new computer vision task called nighttime dehaze-enhancement. This task aims to jointly perform dehazing and lightness enhancement. Our task fundamentally differs from nighttime dehazing – our goal is to jointly dehaze and enhance scenes, while nighttime dehazing aims to dehaze scenes under a nighttime setting. In order to facilitate further research on this task, we release a new benchmark dataset called Reside-β Night dataset, consisting of 4122 nighttime hazed images from 2061 scenes and 2061 ground truth images. Moreover, we also propose a new network called NDENet (Nighttime Dehaze-Enhancement Network), which jointly performs dehazing and low-light enhancement in an end-to-end manner. We evaluate our method on the proposed benchmark and achieve SSIM of 0.8962 and PSNR of 26.25. We also compare our network with other baseline networks on our benchmark to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach. We believe that nighttime dehaze-enhancement is an essential task, particularly for autonomous navigation applications, and we hope that our work will open up new frontiers in research. Our dataset and code will be made publicly available upon acceptance of our paper.

Keywords: dehazing, image enhancement, nighttime, computer vision

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Authors: Erfan Izadpanah

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The present study was conducted to investigate the effect of the Trans-Cranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) on cognitive flexibility and social decision-making in skilled, semi-skilled and novice football players. The present quasi-experimental pretest-posttest study was conducted on 60 randomly-selected subjects divided into trial and placebo groups (n=30 per group). The trial group received three 20-minute sessions of anodic stimulation at the intensity of 2 mA. The placebo group also received three sessions of sham anodic stimulation. Data were collected using the Wisconsin, Grant and Berg Card-Sorting Test (1948) and the ultimatum game and were then analyzed using the ANCOVA. The results showed significant differences between the skilled, semi-skilled and novice football players in the trial and placebo groups in terms of cognitive flexibility and social decision-making (P<0.01). TDCS appears to be able to improve cognitive flexibility and consequently social decision-making in football players and is recommended to sport psychologists and coaches as a useful intervention to increase cognitive flexibility and improve social decision-making in players.

Keywords: TDCS, cognitive flexibility, social decision-making, skilled, semi-skilled and novice football players

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Authors: Yousif Mohamed Y. Abdallah, Razan Manofely, Rajab M. Ben Yousef

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X-Ray images are very popular as a first tool for diagnosis. Automating the process of analysis of such images is important in order to help physician procedures. In this practice, teeth segmentation from the radiographic images and feature extraction are essential steps. The main objective of this study was to study correction preprocessing of x-rays images using local adaptive filters in order to evaluate contrast enhancement pattern in different x-rays images such as grey color and to evaluate the usage of new nonlinear approach for contrast enhancement of soft tissues in x-rays images. The data analyzed by using MatLab program to enhance the contrast within the soft tissues, the gray levels in both enhanced and unenhanced images and noise variance. The main techniques of enhancement used in this study were contrast enhancement filtering and deblurring images using the blind deconvolution algorithm. In this paper, prominent constraints are firstly preservation of image's overall look; secondly, preservation of the diagnostic content in the image and thirdly detection of small low contrast details in diagnostic content of the image.

Keywords: enhancement, x-rays, pixel intensity values, MatLab

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Authors: Carla Nardelli, Jérome Holtzmann, Céline Baeyens, Catherine Bortolon

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Background. Emotion regulation (ER) is a process associated with difficulties in mental health. Given its transdiagnostic features, its improvement could facilitate the recovery of various psychological issues. A limit of current studies is the lack of knowledge regarding whether available interventionsimprove ER flexibility (i.e., the ability to implement ER strategies in line with contextual demands), even though this capacity has been associated with better mental health and well-being. Therefore, the aim of the study is to test the efficacy of a 9-weeks ER group program (the Affect Regulation Training-ART), using the most appropriate measures (i.e., experience sampling method) in a student population. Plus, the goal of the study is to explore the potential mediative role of ER flexibility on mental health improvement. Method. This Randomized Controlled Trial will comparethe ER program group to an active control group (a relaxation program) in 100 participants. To test the mediative role of ER flexibility on mental health, daily measures will be used before, during, and after the interventions to evaluate the extent to which participants are flexible in their ER. Expected outcomes. Using multilevel analyses, we expect an improvement in anxious-depressive symptomatology for both groups. However, we expect the ART group to improve specifically on ER flexibility ability and the last to be a mediative variable on mental health. Conclusion. This study will enhance knowledge on interventions for students and the impact of interventions on ER flexibility. Also, this research will improve knowledge on ecological measures for assessing the effect of interventions. Overall, this project represents new opportunities to improve ER skills to improve mental health in undergraduate students.

Keywords: emotion regulation flexibility, experience sampling method, psychological intervention, emotion regulation skills

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Authors: Polycarpe Feussi

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Globalization, technological and customer increasing changes, amongst other drivers, result in higher levels of uncertainty and unpredictability for organizations. In order for organizations to cope with the uncertain and fast-changing economic and business environment, these organizations need to innovate in order to achieve flexibility. In simple terms, the organizations must develop strategies leading to the ability of these organizations to provide horizontal information connections across the supply chain to create and deliver products that meet customer needs by synchronization of customer demands with product creation. The generated information will create efficiency and effectiveness throughout the whole supply chain regarding production, storage, and distribution, as well as eliminating redundant activities and reduction in response time. In an integrated supply chain, spanning activities include coordination with distributors and suppliers. This paper explains how through postponement strategies, flexibility can be achieved in an organization. In order to achieve the above, a thorough literature review was conducted via the search of online websites that contains material from scientific journal data-bases, articles, and textbooks on the subject of postponement and flexibility. The findings of the research are found in the last part of the paper. The first part introduces the concept of postponement and its importance in supply chain management. The second part of the paper provides the methodology used in the process of writing the paper.

Keywords: postponement strategies, supply chain management, flexibility, logistics

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Authors: Salah Hosseini, Hadi Ramezani, Bagher Shahbazi, Hossein Rabiei, Jafar Hooshmand, Hiwa Khaldi

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Diversity of energy portfolio and fluctuation of urban energy demand establish the need for more operational flexibility of combined Cooling, Heat, and Power Plants. Currently, the most common way to achieve these specifications is the use of heat storage devices or wet operation of gas turbines. The current work addresses using variable extraction steam turbine in conjugation with a gas turbine inlet cooling system as an alternative way for enhancement of a CCHP cycle operating range. A thermodynamic model is developed and typical apartments building in PARDIS Technology Park (located at Tehran Province) is chosen as a case study. Due to the variable Heat demand and using excess chiller capacity for turbine inlet cooling purpose, the mentioned steam turbine and TIAC system provided an opportunity for flexible operation of the cycle and boosted the independence of the power and heat generation in the CCHP plant. It was found that the ratio of power to the heat of CCHP cycle varies from 12.6 to 2.4 depending on the City heating and cooling demands and ambient condition, which means a good independence between power and heat generation. Furthermore, selection of the TIAC design temperature is done based on the amount of ratio of power gain to TIAC coil surface area, it was found that for current cycle arrangement the TIAC design temperature of 15 C is most economical. All analysis is done based on the real data, gathered from the local weather station of the PARDIS site.

Keywords: CCHP plant, GTG, HRSG, STG, TIAC, operational flexibility, power to heat ratio

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Authors: Narupon Kunbootsri, Patpiya Sirasaporn

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Low back pain is the most common of chief complaints in chronic pain. Low back pain directly affect to activities daily living and also has high socioeconomic costs. The prevalence of low back pain is high in both genders in all populations. The symptoms of low back pain including, pain at low back area, muscle spasm, tenderness points and stiff back. Trancutanous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS) is one of modalities mainly use for control pain. There was indicated that TENS is wildly use in low back pain, but no scientific data about the flexibility of muscle after TENS in low back pain. Thus the aim of this study was to investigate immediate effect of TENS on flexibility and health status in patients with chronic nonspecific low back pain. Eight chronic nonspecific low back pain patients 1 male and 7 female employed in this study. Participants were diagnosed by a doctor based on history and physical examination. Each participant received treatment at physiotherapy unit. Participants completed Roland Morris Disability Questionnaire (RMDQ), numeric rating scale (NRS) and trunk flexibility before treatment. Each participant received low frequency TENS set at asymmetrical, 10 Hz, 20 minutes per point. Immediately after treatment, participants completed RNS, RMDQ and trunk flexibility again. All participants were treated by only one physiotherapist. There was a statistically significant increased in flexibility immediately after low frequency TENS [mean difference -6.37 with 95%CI were (-8.35)-(-4.39)]. There was a statistically significant decreased in numeric rating scale [mean difference 2.13 with 95%CI were 1.08-3.16]. Roland Morris Disability Questionnaire showed improvement of health status average 44.8% immediately after treatment. In conclusion, the results of the present study indicate that immediately effect after low frequency TENS can decrease pain and improve flexibility of back muscle in chronic nonspecific low back pain patients.

Keywords: low back pain, flexibility, TENS, chronic

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Authors: Yousif Mohamed Y. Abdallah, Eltayeb Wagallah

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Image enhancement allows the observer to see details in images that may not be immediately observable in the original image. Image enhancement is the transformation or mapping of one image to another. The enhancement of certain features in images is accompanied by undesirable effects. To achieve maximum image quality after denoising, a new, low order, local adaptive Gaussian scale mixture model and median filter were presented, which accomplishes nonlinearities from scattering a new nonlinear approach for contrast enhancement of bones in bone scan images using both gamma correction and negative transform methods. The usual assumption of a distribution of gamma and Poisson statistics only lead to overestimation of the noise variance in regions of low intensity but to underestimation in regions of high intensity and therefore to non-optional results. The contrast enhancement results were obtained and evaluated using MatLab program in nuclear medicine images of the bones. The optimal number of bins, in particular the number of gray-levels, is chosen automatically using entropy and average distance between the histogram of the original gray-level distribution and the contrast enhancement function’s curve.

Keywords: bone scan, nuclear medicine, Matlab, image processing technique

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Authors: Michael Dolgin, Oz Hamtzani, Talma Kushnir

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A literature review has shown that while parents of children with cancer experience increased levels of psychological distress associated with their child's medical condition, considerable variability in parental adjustment is evident. Of the factors that may account for this variability, little attention has been devoted to the simultaneous interaction of three coping constructs and their role in parental adjustment: (1) Coping techniques employed, (2) Repertoire of coping techniques, and (3) Flexibility in applying coping techniques. While these constructs have been studied individually in relation to adjustment in general, studies to date have not included them together within a single conceptual model and research design and evaluated them in a clinical population. The objective of the current study was to determine how these three coping technique constructs interact to impact parental adjustment to pediatric cancer. A cross-sectional sample of 145 parents of children in active cancer treatment completed standardized measures of coping techniques, repertoire, flexibility, and parental distress. A hierarchical multiple regression analysis demonstrated that 37% of the variance in parental distress was predicted by the use of avoidance-focused coping techniques [F(1,118)=69.843, p<.001], with an additional 3% predicted by coping repertoire [F(2,117)=7.63, p=.00] for a total of 40% variance explained. Coping flexibility was found to mediate the relationship between coping repertoire and parental distress. These findings suggest that coping techniques employed by parents (problem/emotion-focused vs. avoidance-focused), as well as coping repertoire, significantly impact parental adjustment. Flexibility in applying coping techniques within one’s coping repertoire further contributes to parental adjustment. Implications for further study and clinical intervention will be presented.

Keywords: coping techniques, repertoire, flexibility, adjustment

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Authors: Nicole V. Shifrin

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Scheduling flexibility is becoming an increasingly available option for employees struggling to balance their work and life responsibilities, allowing employees to coordinate work schedules with their additional roles. The goal of such opportunities is to help employees manage the demands they face across domains of life by allowing employees to work from home, design their own work hours, take time off when necessary, along with various other scheduling accommodations. Organizations are also turning to utilizing scheduling flexibility to facilitate employee health and wellbeing through the reduction of stress and maximization of efficiency. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the effects of scheduling flexibility on employee health-related behaviors and outcomes through a synthesis of research. The current meta-analytic review of 19 samples within 16 studies with a total sample size of 20,707 employees examines the relationship between the degree of scheduling flexibility available to employees and the resulting health outcomes and exercise habits. The results demonstrate that reduced scheduling flexibility is associated with poorer health status, suggesting that schedule inflexibility can hinder employees’ ability to maintain and support their health. These findings hold practical implications for developing work schedules to promote employee health and health-related behaviors, such as eating well and exercising. Additionally, there was a positive association between increased scheduling flexibility and engagement in exercise, suggesting that employees with more flexible schedules exercise more frequently than those with less flexible schedules. A potential explanation for the resulting relationship is that flexible schedules leave employees more time due to shorter work days, shorter or eliminated commutes, etc. with which they can use to engage in healthy behaviors. These findings stress the importance of promoting job designs that facilitate employee engagement in healthy behaviors, which directly impact their overall health status. Implications for practice are discussed as well as future directions in examining the link between job design and employee health and well-being.

Keywords: exercise, health, meta-analysis, job design, scheduling flexibility

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Authors: Aly Mohamed El Husseiny, Azza Ezz Abdelkader

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There is a critical thin line between freedom of choice and randomness. The distance between imagination and perception and between perception and execution varies depending on numerous factors. While in developed areas residents have the opportunity and abilities to build flexible homes, residents in developing areas create their own dwellings in informal settlements, even though none of them is comfortable at home in the long run. This paper explores three factors: What residents really need, what they do with limited flexibility, and what they do when there are no limits, as in the case of informal settlements. This paper studies alteration to residential buildings and how they connect to the changes in people’s lifecycle in all past cases. This study also examines all approaches to flexibility, focusing on a social approach. The results of this study are based on three practical studies: Interviews with residents in an informal settlement (Eshash Mahfouz in Minya in Egypt), a civil study of buildings in a middle-class district, and a survey of residents from many countries, including Egypt, and interviews with a number of them to determine residents’ needs and the extent of renovations they made or would like to make to their homes.

Keywords: flexibility, housing, freedom of choice, social, changes, residents

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Authors: Pintu Modak

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The core strength is essential not only for athletes but also for everyone to perform everyday's household chores with ease and efficiency. Core strength means to strengthen the muscles deep within the abdomen which connect to the spine and pelvis which control the position and movement of the central portion of the body. Strengthening of core muscles is important for injury prevention (lower back pain) and performance enhancement in sports. The purpose of the study was to review the literature and findings on the effects of Yoga exercise as a part of sports training method and fitness programs. Fifteen papers were found to be relevant for this review. There are five simple yoga poses: Ardha Phalakasana (Low plank), Vasisthasana (side plank), Purvottanasana (inclined plane), Sarvangasana (shoulder stand), and Virabhadrasana (Warrior) are found to be very effective for strengthening core muscles. They are the most effective poses to build core strength and flexibility to the core muscles. The study suggests that sports and fitness trainers should include these yoga exercises in their programs to strengthen core muscles.

Keywords: core strength, yoga, injuries, lower back

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Authors: Muna F. Al-Sammaraie

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The aim of this research is to present a multi spectral image enhancement methods used to achieve highly real digital image populates only a small portion of the available range of digital values. Also, a quantitative measure of image enhancement is presented. This measure is related with concepts of the Webers Low of the human visual system. For decades, several image enhancement techniques have been proposed. Although most techniques require profuse amount of advance and critical steps, the result for the perceive image are not as satisfied. This study involves changing the original values so that more of the available range is used; then increases the contrast between features and their backgrounds. It consists of reading the binary image on the basis of pixels taking them byte-wise and displaying it, calculating the statistics of an image, automatically enhancing the color of the image based on statistics calculation using algorithms and working with RGB color bands. Finally, the enhanced image is displayed along with image histogram. A number of experimental results illustrated the performance of these algorithms. Particularly the quantitative measure has helped to select optimal processing parameters: the best parameters and transform.

Keywords: image enhancement, multi-spectral, RGB, histogram

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Authors: Fathilahbinti Ali, Jamarosliza Jamaluddin, Arun Kumar Upadhyay

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Poly(lactic acid) (PLA) is a biodegradable polymer which has good mechanical properties, however, its brittleness limits its usage especially in packaging materials. Therefore, in this work, PLA based polyurethane films were prepared by synthesizing with different types of isocyanates; methylene diisocyanate (MDI) and hexamethylene diisocyanates (HDI). For this purpose, PLA based polyurethane must have good strength and flexibility. Therefore, polycaprolactone which has better flexibility were prepared with PLA. An effective way to endow polylactic acid with toughness is through chain-extension reaction of the polylactic acid pre-polymer with polycaprolactone used as chain extender. Polyurethane prepared from MDI showed brittle behaviour, while, polyurethane prepared from HDI showed flexibility at same concentrations.

Keywords: biodegradable polymer, flexible, poly(lactic acid), polyurethane

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Authors: Hadi Mousavi, Majid Davoudi Nasr

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Executives can maximize profits by recognizing the factors that affect investment and using them to obtain the optimal level of investment. Inefficient markets have shortcomings that can impact the optimal level of investment, leading to the process of over-investment or under-investment. In the present study, the relationship between the overconfidence of senior managers and abnormal cash fluctuations with respect to financial flexibility in companies listed in the Tehran stock exchange from 2009 to 2013 were evaluated. In this study, the sample consists of 84 companies selected by a systematic elimination method and 420 year-companies in total. In this research, EVIEWS software was used to test the research hypotheses by linear regression and correlation coefficient and after designing and testing the research hypothesis. After designing and testing research hypotheses that have been used to each hypothesis, it was concluded that there was a significant relationship between the overconfidence of senior managers and abnormal cash fluctuations, and this relationship was not significant at any level of financial flexibility. Moreover, the findings of the research showed that there was a significant relationship between senior manager’s overconfidence and positive abnormal cash flow fluctuations in firms, and this relationship is significant only at the level of companies with high financial flexibility. Finally, the results indicate that there is no significant relationship between senior managers 'overconfidence and negative cash flow abnormalities, and the relationship between senior managers' overconfidence and negative cash flow fluctuations at the level of companies with high financial flexibility was confirmed.

Keywords: abnormal cash fluctuations, overconfidence of senior managers, financial flexibility, accounting

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Authors: Prashant Das, Tushar Singh, Virendra Byadwal

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The present study attempted to understand the role of cognitive flexibility and employee engagement in predicting employees’ turnover intentions. Employee turnover is a significant problem that many organizations are facing these days. Employee turnover is not only extremely expensive for the employer but also results in poor production levels. In developing countries like India, organizations once believed to have most stable employees, are facing major turnover problems. One such organization is banking organizations. Due to globalization, banks are now changing their work scenarios under which the employees have many different roles to perform. Cognitive flexibility which refers to an individual’s ability to shift cognitive sets and to adapt to one’s changing environment, thus seems to be an important factor that are responsible for the employee turnover in organizations. It is hypothesized that those with higher cognitive flexibility would be more able to adapt to the changing work demands of the organizations and thus would show less turnover intentions. Another factor that seems to be important in predicting turnover is employee engagement. Kahn referred to engagement in terms of the harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles [by which they] employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances. Studies have shown a strong relationship between employee engagement and turnover intentions. Those with higher engagement with their jobs have found to show low turnover intentions. This study thus hypothesizes that employees with higher engagement will show lower levels of turnover intentions. A total of 150 bank employees (75 from private and 75 from public) participated in this study. They were administered Cognitive Flexibility Scale, Gallup Questionnaire and Intention to Stay Questionnaire along with another questionnaire asking for their demographic details. Results of the study revealed that employees with higher levels of cognitive flexibility and employee engagement show lover levels of turnover intentions. However, the effect is more prominent in case of employees of private banks. Demographic characteristics such as level of the employee and years of engagement in the current job have also been found to be influencing the relationship between cognitive flexibility, employee engagement and turnover intentions. Results of the study are interpreted in accordance to the prevalent literature and theoretical positions.

Keywords: cognitive flexibility, employee engagement, organization, turnover intentions

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Authors: Mohammed Ali

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A flexible manufacturing system has been studied under different manufacturing strategies. The aim of this paper is to test the impact of number of pallets and routing flexibility (design strategy) on system performance operating at different sequencing and dispatching rules (control strategies) at unbalanced load condition (planning strategies). A computer simulation model is developed to evaluate the effects of aforementioned strategies on the make-span time, which is taken as the system performance measure. The impact of number of pallets is shown with the different levels of routing flexibility. In this paper, the same manufacturing system is modeled under different combination of sequencing and dispatching rules. The result of the simulation shows that there is definite range of pallets for each level of routing flexibility at which the systems performs satisfactorily.

Keywords: flexible manufacturing system, manufacturing, strategy, makespan

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Authors: Rachnavy Pornthep, Khaothin Thawichai

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The purpose of this paper was to investigate the effects of rowing ergometer exercise on older persons health. The subjects were divided into two groups. Group 1 was control group (10 male and 10 female) Group 2 was experimental group (10 male and 10 female). The time for study was 12 week. Group 1 engage in normal daily activities Group 2 Training with rowing machine for 20 minutes three days a week. The average age of the experimental group was 73.7 years old, mean weight 55.4 kg, height 154.8 cm in the control group, mean age was 74.95 years, mean weight 48.6 kg, mean height 153.85 cm. Physical fitness test composted of body size, flexibility, Strength, muscle endurance and cardiovascular endurance. The comparison between the experimental and control groups before training showed that body weight, body mass index and waist to hip ratio were significantly different. The flexibility, strength, cardiovascular endurance was not significantly different. The comparison between the control group and the experimental group after training showed that body weight, body mass index and cardiovascular endurance were significantly different. The ratio of waist to hips, flexibility and muscular strength were not significantly different. Comparison of physical fitness before training and after training of the control group showed that body weight, flexibility (Sit and reach) and muscular strength (30 – Second chair stand) were significantly different. Body mass index, waist to hip ratio, muscles flexible (Shoulder girdle flexibility), muscle strength (30 – Second arm curl) and the cardiovascular endurance were not significantly difference. Comparison of physical fitness before training and after training the experimental group showed that waist to hip ratio, flexibility (sit and reach) muscle strength (30 – Second chair stand), cardiovascular endurance (Standing leg raises - up to 2 minutes) were significantly different. The Body mass index and the flexibility (Shoulder girdle flexibility) no significantly difference. The study found that exercising with rowing machine can improve the physical fitness of the elderly, especially the cardiovascular endurance, corresponding with the past research on the effects of exercise in the elderly with different exercise such as cycling, treadmill, walking on the elliptical machine. Therefore, we can conclude that exercise by using rowing machine can improve cardiovascular system and flexibility in the elderly.

Keywords: effect, rowing, exercise, elderly

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Authors: Tarsem Singh

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The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of yoga training on muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility and agility of female hockey players. For this purpose, a sample of forty (N=40) female hockey players of age ranging from 18 to 25 years were selected from different colleges affiliated to Guru Nanak Dev University Amritsar. Further, the subjects were purposively divided in two groups. First group, designated as experimental group (N1=20) and the second one as control group (N2=20). All the participants were informed about the objectives and methodology of this study and they volunteered to participate in this experimental study. The study was restricted to the variables: muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility and agility. The same were measured by using Flexed Arms Hang Test, Sit-Ups Test, Sit and Reach Test and Shuttle Run Test respectively. Experimental group have undergone yoga training for 8-week by following a sequence of selected yogic asanas i.e. Sarvangasana, Chakra-asana, Utthita Parsvakonasana, Parivrtta Trikonasana, Halasana, Bhujangasana, Dhanurasana, Ustrasana, Gomukasana, Paschimotansana, Ardha-Matsyendrasana and Hanumanasan. Paired sample t-test was applied to study the effects of yoga training on female hockey players. The level of significance was set at 0.05. Results revealed significant differences between pre and post-tests of experimental group in respect to Muscular strength (t-6.946*), Muscular endurance (t-9.863*), Flexibility (t-11.052*) and Agility (t-14.068*). However, insignificant differences were observed between pre and post-tests of control group.

Keywords: yoga, muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility, agility

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Authors: M. Amoura, M. Benmoussa, N. Zeraibi

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The flow and heat transfer is an important phenomenon in engineering systems due to its wide application in electronic cooling, heat exchangers, double pane windows etc.. The enhancement of heat transfer in these systems is an essential topic from an energy saving perspective. Lower heat transfer performance when conventional fluids, such as water, engine oil and ethylene glycol are used hinders improvements in performance and causes a consequent reduction in the size of such systems. The use of solid particles as an additive suspended into the base fluid is a technique for heat transfer enhancement. Therefore, the heat transfer enhancement in a horizontal circular tube that is maintained at a constant temperature under laminar regime has been investigated numerically. A computational code applied to the problem by use of the finite volume method was developed. Nanofluid was made by dispersion of Al2O3 nanoparticles in pure water and ethylene glycol. Results illustrate that the suspended nanoparticles increase the heat transfer with an increase in the nanoparticles volume fraction and for a considered range of Reynolds numbers. On the other hand, the heat transfer is very sensitive to the base fluid.

Keywords: Al2O3 nanoparticles, circular tube, heat transfert enhancement, numerical simulation

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Authors: Che Hsiu Chen, Kuo Wei Tseng, Zih Jian Huang, Hon Wen Cheng

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A typical warm-up contains both stretching exercises and jogging. The static stretching prior to training or competition may cause detrimental effects to athletic performance. However, it is unclear whether different types of dynamic stretching exercises had different acute effects on knee flexors stiffness, flexibility, and strength. The purpose of this study was to analyze the knee flexors stiffness, flexibility, and strength gains after dynamic straight leg raise (DSLR) and dynamic modified toe-touch (MTT) stretching. Sixteen healthy university active men (height 176.27 ± 4.03 cm; weight 72.27 ± 8.90 kg; age 22.09 ± 2.31 years). After 5 minutes (8km/h) of running subjects performed 2 randomly ordered stretching protocols: DSLR and MTT stretching protocols. There were a total of six, 30 seconds bouts of dynamic stretching (15 repetitions) with 30seconds rest between bouts. The outcome measures were maximal voluntary isokinetic concentric hamstring strength (60°/s), muscle flexibility test by passive straight leg raise (PSLR), active straight leg raise (ASLR), and muscle stiffness using ultrasound Acoustic Radiation Forced Impulse (ARFI) elastography before and immediately after stretching. The muscle stiffness and concentric strength decreased significantly (p < .05), the flexibility no significant change after DSLR protocol (p > .05). The concentric strength decreased significantly (p < .05), the flexibility and muscle stiffness no significant change after MTT protocol (p > .05), whereas no significant differences were found for the DSLR and MTT. Our findings suggest that dynamic stretching (30s x 6 bouts) resulted in change in muscle stiffness or may be induced slack in the musculotendinous unit thereby, reducing force production. Therefore, 30s x 6 bouts of dynamic stretching adversely affects efforts of hamstring muscle maximal concentric strength.

Keywords: sport injury, ultrasound, eccentric exercise, performance

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Authors: Snehal R. Pathak, Sachin S. Munnoli

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Evaluation of dynamic earth pressure on retaining wall is a topic of primary importance. In present paper, dynamic active earth pressure and displacement of flexible cantilever retaining wall has been evaluated analytically using 2-DOF mass-spring-dashpot model by incorporating both wall and backfill properties. The effect of wall flexibility on dynamic active earth pressure and wall displacement are studied and presented in graphical form. The obtained results are then compared with the various conventional methods, experimental analysis and also with PLAXIS analysis. It is observed that the dynamic active earth pressure decreases with increase in the wall flexibility while wall displacement increases linearly with flexibility of the wall. The results obtained by proposed 2-DOF analytical model are found to be more realistic and economical.

Keywords: earth pressure, earthquake, 2-DOF model, Plaxis, retaining walls, wall movement

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Authors: S. Etaig, R. Hasan, N. Perera

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This paper analyses the heat transfer performance and fluid flow using different nanofluids in a square enclosure. The energy equation and Navier-Stokes equation are solved numerically using finite volume scheme. The effect of volume fraction concentration on the enhancement of heat transfer has been studied icorporating the Brownian motion; the influence of effective thermal conductivity on the enhancement was also investigated for a range of volume fraction concentration. The velocity profile for different Rayleigh number. Water-Cu, water AL2O3 and water-TiO2 were tested.

Keywords: computational fluid dynamics, natural convection, nanofluid and thermal conductivity

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Authors: L. Slimani, A. Bousri, A. Hamadouche, H. Ben Hamed

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The aim of this experimental and numerical study is to analyze the effects of acoustic streaming generated by 40 kHz ultrasonic waves on heat transfer in forced convection, with and without 40 PPI aluminum metal foam. Preliminary dynamic and thermal studies were done with COMSOL Multiphase, to see heat transfer enhancement degree by inserting a 40PPI metal foam (10 × 2 × 3 cm) on a heat sink, after having determined experimentally its permeability and Forchheimer's coefficient. The results obtained numerically are in accordance with those obtained experimentally, with an enhancement factor of 205% for a velocity of 0.4 m/s compared to an empty channel. The influence of 40 kHz ultrasound on heat transfer was also tested with and without metallic foam. Results show a remarkable increase in Nusselt number in an empty channel with an enhancement factor of 37,5%, while no influence of ultrasound on heat transfer in metal foam presence.

Keywords: acoustic streaming, enhancing heat transfer, laminar flow, metal foam, ultrasound

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Authors: Christian Arcos, Marley Vellasco, Abraham Alcaim

Abstract:

In this paper, we present a wavelet coefficients masking based on Local Binary Patterns (WLBP) approach to enhance the temporal spectra of the wavelet coefficients for speech enhancement. This technique exploits the wavelet denoising scheme, which splits the degraded speech into pyramidal subband components and extracts frequency information without losing temporal information. Speech enhancement in each high-frequency subband is performed by binary labels through the local binary pattern masking that encodes the ratio between the original value of each coefficient and the values of the neighbour coefficients. This approach enhances the high-frequency spectra of the wavelet transform instead of eliminating them through a threshold. A comparative analysis is carried out with conventional speech enhancement algorithms, demonstrating that the proposed technique achieves significant improvements in terms of PESQ, an international recommendation of objective measure for estimating subjective speech quality. Informal listening tests also show that the proposed method in an acoustic context improves the quality of speech, avoiding the annoying musical noise present in other speech enhancement techniques. Experimental results obtained with a DNN based speech recognizer in noisy environments corroborate the superiority of the proposed scheme in the robust speech recognition scenario.

Keywords: binary labels, local binary patterns, mask, wavelet coefficients, speech enhancement, speech recognition

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Authors: M. F. Miah, A. Chakrabarty

Abstract:

Two popular and highly valued fish, Stinging catfish (Heteropneustes fossilis) and Asian catfish (Clarias batrachus) are considered for observing genetic enhancement. Cross breeding was performed considering wild and farmed fish through inducing agent. Five RAPD markers were used to assess genetic diversity among parents and offspring of these two catfish for evaluating genetic enhancement in F1 generation. Considering different genetic data such as banding pattern of DNA, polymorphic loci, polymorphic information content (PIC), inter individual pair wise similarity, Nei genetic similarity, genetic distance, phylogenetic relationships, allele frequency, genotype frequency, intra locus gene diversity and average gene diversity of parents and offspring of these two fish were analyzed and finally in both cases higher genetic diversity was found in F1 generation than the parents.

Keywords: Heteropneustes fossilis, Clarias batrachus, cross breeding, genetic enhancement

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Authors: Rithi Baruah

Abstract:

The aviation industry is one such sectors whose primary aim is to work for the safety and comfort of their clients and customers. The crew members in the aviation industry include pilots, flight attendants, air traffic controllers, baggage personnel and maintenance personnel. This study will concentrate on the frontline employees of the aviation industry, the flight attendants. Flight attendants belong to the niche group of population who are paid to smile. Although the profession seems to be very glamorous, it is physically and psychologically very taxing. Energy at workplace is a fairly new concept and is an organizational resource which helps employee attain their goals. Therefore, the researcher will aim to establish the relationship between relational energy and the major issue of emotional labor and cognitive flexibility among flight attendants. The researcher will hypothesize that there will be a negative relationship between relational energy and emotional labour, and a positive relationship between relational energy and cognitive flexibility. Also, a positive relationship will be expected between cognitive flexibility and emotional labour of cabin crew. A quantitative research design will be used to study the relationship among 50 flight attendants in India. The findings of the research will not only help the aviation sector but will be a major contribution to the existing literature of aviation psychology in India which is scanty. The relationships can also provide scope to develop a model using the same. From crew resource management and aviation psychology perspectives, relationships among the study variables will not only provide scope for helping the aviation employees in particular but also develop the performance and safety of aviation sector at large.

Keywords: cabin crew, cognitive flexibility, emotional labour, relational energy

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Authors: Daud Mustafa Minhas, Raja Rehan Khalid, Georg Frey

Abstract:

The next generation power systems are equipped with abundantly available free renewable energy resources (RES). During their low-cost operations, the price of electricity significantly reduces to a lower value, and sometimes it becomes negative. Therefore, it is recommended not to operate the traditional power plants (e.g. coal power plants) and to reduce the losses. In fact, it is not a cost-effective solution, because these power plants exhibit some shutdown and startup costs. Moreover, they require certain time for shutdown and also need enough pause before starting up again, increasing inefficiency in the whole power network. Hence, there is always a trade-off between avoiding negative electricity prices, and the startup costs of power plants. To exploit this trade-off and to increase the profit of a power plant, two main contributions are made: 1) introducing retrofit technology for state of art coal power plant; 2) proposing optimal control strategy for a power plant by exploiting different flexibility features. These flexibility features include: improving ramp rate of power plant, reducing startup time and lowering minimum load. While, the control strategy is solved as mixed integer linear programming (MILP), ensuring optimal solution for the profit maximization problem. Extensive comparisons are made considering pre and post-retrofit coal power plant having the same efficiencies under different electricity price scenarios. It concludes that if the power plant must remain in the market (providing services), more flexibility reflects direct economic advantage to the plant operator.

Keywords: discrete optimization, power plant flexibility, profit maximization, unit commitment model

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Authors: Shahriar Farzam, Maryam Rastgarpour

Abstract:

Image denoising plays extremely important role in digital image processing. Enhancement of clinical image research based on Curvelet has been developed rapidly in recent years. In this paper, we present a method for image contrast enhancement for cone beam CT (CBCT) images based on fast discrete curvelet transforms (FDCT) that work through Unequally Spaced Fast Fourier Transform (USFFT). These transforms return a table of Curvelet transform coefficients indexed by a scale parameter, an orientation and a spatial location. Accordingly, the coefficients obtained from FDCT-USFFT can be modified in order to enhance contrast in an image. Our proposed method first uses a two-dimensional mathematical transform, namely the FDCT through unequal-space fast Fourier transform on input image and then applies thresholding on coefficients of Curvelet to enhance the CBCT images. Consequently, applying unequal-space fast Fourier Transform leads to an accurate reconstruction of the image with high resolution. The experimental results indicate the performance of the proposed method is superior to the existing ones in terms of Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Effective Measure of Enhancement (EME).

Keywords: curvelet transform, CBCT, image enhancement, image denoising

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